MCLC: Religion and Locality workshop

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: Paul Farrelly <paul.farrelly at anu.edu.au>
Subject: Religion and Locality workshop
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Title: Religion and Locality in the Chinese World

Date: 27-28 August 2013
 
Location: The Australian Centre on China in the World (CIW), College of
Asia and the Pacific, Australian National University
 
Convenors: Dr Benjamin Penny, Mr Paul Farrelly

 
This workshop will explore histories of how religion is created,
transmitted, embodied and changed in specific locations in late imperial,
modern and contemporary China and Taiwan. Taking not only temples,
mosques, churches, schools, tea houses, festival sites, burial grounds and
shrines as the locus of research, but also cities, neighbourhoods,
counties and districts, it will explore the rich, and often overlooked,
details that populate the lived experience of religious activity. Seeking
to focus on interactions between place, text and individual agency, we aim
to reflect on the layered and specific histories that develop as a
consequence of this interplay. Through reducing the scale to a specific
locale, phenomena such as religious change, conversion practice, and
individual transformation can be reappraised.

 
Questions to consider may include: How do the particular circumstances of
time and place shape religious experience? What is specific to a location
that influences the nature of religious practice there? What religious
power is embodied in a place? How is the power created or maintained? How
are narratives created around a location? How are locations represented in
oral and printed media? What is characteristic of the religious world in a
particular place? How do the defining religious features of a locality
originate?

 
Seeking to enhance scholarship about place and religion in China and
Taiwan, we request work informed by microhistory and theories of the
everyday that offer alternative perspectives on the sacred world. In doing
this, we will explore the idea that religious experience is not homogenous
across geography, and that even comparatively small distances can produce
meaningful differences in institutions and practices. Through sharpening
the focus of research to a county, district, neighbourhood, or particular
numinous site we also hope to examine the relations between particular
places and institutions of authority based locally or distantly.

 
Interested participants should submit a paper title, abstract with
keywords (300 words maximum) along with brief biographical information
(name, affiliation) to paul.farrelly at anu.edu.au by 1 May 2013. CIW may be
able to provide some financial assistance for the travel and accommodation
expenses for successful applicants. The conference will be conducted in
English and we plan to publish the proceedings in a special edition of
East Asian History <http://www.eastasianhistory.org/>.

 
Contact: benjamin.penny at anu.edu.au, paul.farrelly at anu.edu.au